As winter deepens, Resistance Headquarters becomes grim after a devastating Undying assault on the East Island. Bombs destroy a wall and buildings, allowing necrothralls and chimaeras to pour in. Luc’s battalion is trapped for more than a day, losing many soldiers and medics before rescue; Luc and Lila return exhausted, while Soren, badly injured and traumatised, refuses to speak about what he saw.

Crowther reduces Helena’s meetings with Kaine to once a week. Kaine continues training Helena and passing intelligence, but he treats her with cold resentment after learning she helped make him a controlled asset. Helena accepts that she has become a collar around him, while her hospital work becomes an exhausting blur of fresh casualties and failed attempts to treat Titus.

Helena is called back from the Outpost to find Lila and Soren gravely injured and Luc missing. Lila has been stabbed near the neck with altered nullium, which blocks resonance far more intensely than expected. Because alchemical healing will not work, Helena and Matron Pace perform dangerous manual surgery, extracting a crumbling spike and shards from Lila’s chest cavity while trying to keep her alive until Shiseo can prepare a sequestering treatment.

While Lila remains unconscious, Ilva and other leaders interrogate Soren, who remembers an explosion, Luc’s disappearance, and Lila telling Luc to run. Helena stops the questioning because Soren has a head injury, then treats him privately and discovers he has lost his right eye. Soren is consumed by guilt for bringing Lila back instead of pursuing Luc, and Helena renders him unconscious to finish removing irreparable eye tissue. Rhea later grieves quietly over Soren and Lila, lamenting the damage done to her family.

At the Council meeting, the attack is reconstructed: Luc and Lila passed a condemned building just before it exploded, most of their unit died, signs of a fight were found, and Luc’s weapons were left behind. With no message from the Undying, Ilva insists Luc may still be alive and orders Helena to send Kaine on a critical mission to learn everything and recover Luc if possible. Helena meets Kaine at the Outpost, realises he did not know about Luc’s capture, and gives him the order, but when she tries to speak about their broken relationship, Kaine bitterly accuses her of becoming a new set of manacles.

Back at Headquarters, Helena finds Soren already organising an unauthorized rescue with Alister, Penny, Sebastian, and Sofia Purnell, Crowther’s hospital informant. Purnell claims to know of a secret prison accessible through West Island waterways, and Soren insists they must act before Ascendance worsens conditions and delays them. Soren asks Helena not only to heal Luc but to use any means necessary, even necromancy, if Soren dies; Helena reluctantly agrees for Luc’s sake. Before leaving, Helena rushes to gather medical supplies and gives Shiseo written details, asking him to warn Kaine at the Outpost or Ilva if he cannot, then rejoins the rescue party.